Blind spots

Even the most capable leaders have blind spots.
Patterns they can’t see in themselves but that others experience every day. Left unchecked, they stall progress, strain relationships, and erode influence.

The hardest part? Spotting them early enough to change course.

For me, two stand out across my career:

1. Thinking I couldn’t do “big business maths.”
I told myself I wasn’t a finance person, that the scale of balance sheets and P&Ls in global business was beyond me. For years, that belief sat quietly in the background — a story I’d written about myself.
It took pushing myself through the HBS Finance Director programme, and then running large, complex businesses, to realise that not only could I do it, but I could excel at it. That blind spot became a strength. And it taught me this: the limits we set ourselves are sometimes the easiest ones to dismantle.

2. My unconscious bias towards confident young men from privileged backgrounds.
This one was harder to see, and harder still to admit. For a long time, I found myself gravitating towards those who spoke with confidence and certainty — often young men who had grown up with privilege. What I sometimes overlooked was whether that confidence was backed with humility, empathy, or awareness of that privilege.
When I left IBM and was being interviewed for Silicon Valley startup chair roles, this blind spot surfaced in sharp relief. I was older than most of the founders combined. Their brilliance was clear, but so too was the lack of humility. I recognised the bias in myself, and I decided not to proceed down that lucrative path. It was the right call for me.

We all have these patterns.
They don’t vanish overnight. But the act of naming them, owning them, and choosing differently — that’s where growth begins.

Recently I revisited psychologist Martin Dubin’s work in Blindspotting. He maps out six common blind spots leaders face, with real examples of what happens when we ignore them. His central point is simple but powerful: awareness changes everything.